My day at jury duty

It’s been a busy week, hence the lack of blog posts. Sorry to our 200 readers ’bout that.

On Wednesday I had to do the jury duty thing for the first time ever in California. I’d been called in once before in Boston and ended up in one of the smaller satellite courthouses (if that’s what you call them), sat there until about 3 p.m. playing solitaire and was dismissed. But they fed us lunch.

If I hate anything, it’s having to wake up early and on Wednesday, I was supposed to be there by 7:45 a.m. But thanks to a little internet research, I found out that it wouldn’t matter if I was a little late. And, indeed, it didn’t matter. Warning: if you’re there any later than 8:30, you might miss the hand-in-your-juror-form segment and you’ll miss the chance to get two free transit tickets (I opted for the trolley passes—which can be used anytime. I’m stoked).

OK, so, you sit in a huge room. You listen to the charming judge David Gill talk about the importance of jury duty. There was a short film, too, but I missed most of it. Then you wait. They call out some names every now and then, in alphabetical order, whenever a courtroom lets the jury coordinator know a jury’s needed (remember: about 90 percent of cases never go to trial).

The TV’s tuned to Headline News. On this day, Paris Hilton was the top story. Over and over and over.

This may come as a shock but: there’s no wireless internet in the courthouse. I can suffer through a day without it, sure, but what about all the attorneys who are sitting in trial and maybe want to look something up real quick? It just seems so byzantine.

Around 11:30 a.m., they send you off to lunch and tell you to be back at 1:15. Then, around 2 p.m., they start calling names again. Wouldn’t ya know it—my name was called. How exciting is that? About 40 of us were sent to courtroom 33. We waited in the hallway while a bailiff did roll call. Then, about 10 minutes later, the court clerk came out and started calling names in no particular order. She called out probably three dozen names, leaving about a dozen of us standing in the hall. We were the leftovers. The leftovers sat on the left side of the courtroom (left if you’re facing the judge) while the chosen ones sat in the juror seats and filled the seats on the right side of the courtroom. We all had to be sworn in.

Then the judge came in—Cynthia Bashant. She’s awesome. She explained the whole process, why we were there, what we were there for and how the rest of the afternoon would unfold. The case involved a guy named Jose Cisneros who was accused of possessing meth with the intent to sell. Police officers found the drug during a routine traffic stop. Cisneros didn’t speak English, so an interpreter whispered a translation into a microphone that was connected to a pair of headphones that Cisneros was wearing.

The judge asked some basic questions of potential jurors and anyone with a response had to raise their hand and speak into a microphone that the bailiff passed around (since I was part of the leftovers, I didn’t get to answer any questions). Bashant asked whether anyone had ever had a problem with drug addiction or had a family member or close friend who had (some people answered yes and were asked to explain—pretty personal stuff). She asked about the potential jurors’ feelings toward law enforcement—would they trust a police officer’s credibility if an officer were called as a witness. Would they trust the credibility of a witness who didn’t speak English?

Then each potential juror (except for my group) had to take the microphone, one at a time, and answer a series of questions: where were they employed? how many adults were living in their home and what did those adults do for a living? did they have any friends or family members in law enforcement or the legal profession? was there any reason why they couldn’t be a fair and impartial juror?

After that, the attorneys both got to ask specific questions; some were directed to all the jurors and some were directed to specific jurors (the two or three who admitted to once having a drug problem were asked how they felt about people selling drugs, for instance). The attorney asked whether anyone had had very positive or very negative experiences with law enforcement (one guy said that he really looked up to the crossing guard in elementary school—he was serious about it).

Then it got interesting. Cisneros, his attorney said, might be in the country illegally. The attorney didn’t say for certain, but he wanted to gauge whether that would change a juror’s mind about his client. Welcome to the courtroom, ugly Americans! Cisneros, one guy said, was already a criminal in his mind. Why are we wasting our time and taxpayer dollars if he’s not in this country legally, a woman wanted to know while another potential juror raised her fists in this triumphant “Yeah! Good question!” gesture. Another potential juror wanted to know why Cisneros wasn’t “imported” after he was arrested. The defense attorney editorialized a bit about how immigrants provide cheap labor, prompting one juror to say that we “don’t have an illegal alien problem; we have an illegal employment problem!”

There was an honest-to-god palpable change in the courtroom. Before the whole “potentially illegal” issue came up, everyone was professing their ability to be fair and impartial. But after it came up, it was obvious that a few people would be excused. And they were. The attorneys pow-wowed with the judge in a sidebar, came back and four jurors were excused. The attorneys then each got a chance to make preemptory challenge, meaning they could kick off jurors who they thought might pose a problem. I didn’t count how many more jurors were excused—maybe five to seven. Once the attorneys were satisfied with their 12 jurors and one alternate, the rest of us got to leave. It was around 4:30 at that point.

The trial was supposed to last a day and a half, meaning Mr. Cisneros’ fate’s been decided by now. I’ll see if I can find out what happened and post that next week.